Seventh in the Love Game series. “So you…” Addison prompted in horror. “Heard all the dirty flirting you two have been doing?” Lisa laughed. “Yes, I did, and quite frankly, I’m wondering how the hell you two are still dressed.”

A/N: I really should be focusing my updating efforts on my multi-chapter stories—that or finishing my reading for AP Lit—but as I was sitting in my bed, reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and listening to iTunes, "Don't Trust Me," by 3OH!3 started playing. There was one line that for some reason played out in my head as an Addison and Alex scene. Of course, then I dropped my book, reached for my laptop and typed that scene out. Then I finished (enough to get away with it) my reading and AP Lit written work and commenced to shaping a fluffy story around said scene. Here's the product of my procrastination efforts. Enjoy!

A/N2: This one's for Juli and Kate, for being the hands-down best reviewers/Addex writers alive.

There are a few things you should know about Alex Karev: he's impulsive; he's sexy (and he knows it); he's a surgical resident at Seattle Grace Hospital; he was once married, until his wife of less than a year left him the second her cancer went into remission; he secretly enjoys treating babies and spending his free time in the NICU; and he started enjoying treating babies and spending his free time in the NICU because of a certain redheaded boss.

There are a few things you should know about a certain redheaded boss: she's professional; she's sexy (and she knows it); she's a world-class, double-board-certified OB/GYN and neonatal surgeon with a specialty in genetics and cystic fibrosis; she was an attending at Seattle Grace Hospital and became such when she followed her husband (now ex-husband) to Seattle after sleeping with said (ex-) husband's best friend; she spent her free time tormenting Alex Karev by making him treat babies and spend all his time in the NICU; and she now runs a private practice in Los Angeles called Oceanside Wellness.

Oh, and one more thing that's kind of important: Alex Karev and a certain redhead slept together a month before she moved to LA.

Actually, there's one more thing about Alex Karev that you should know: he's still head over heels crazy about said redhead. Let's call this certain redhead Addison. Okay, okay, we'll call her Addison Forbes Montgomery, M.D.

Anyway, Alex Karev stood in front of the OR board at Seattle Grace Hospital on a Tuesday afternoon not too long ago, thoroughly confused. Something was missing from the board: his name. He'd scoured the board three times, and yet somehow, the sight of his name assigning him to a surgery seemed to elude him. After yet another fruitless search, he turned around and took to the stairs, jumping two at a time.

Before he knew it, he was facing the door to the Chief of Surgery's office. The door had a little metal placard resting in a small rack at eye-level that read, "Dr. Richard Webber, M.D." (Personally, I find the "M.D." part to be redundant, since we've already established that he's a doctor, but that's for another time.) Alex gave the door a quick three raps to the left of the placard and hardly waited for the obligatory "Come in," before barging in.

The Chief looked up from the papers on his desk and appraised Alex over his half-moon glasses. "I need you to go to LA," he answered succinctly and returned his eyes to the papers in front of him.

"You need me to what?" Alex demanded. He'd completely forgotten that demanding things of the Chief of Surgery probably wasn't the best way to get what he wanted.

"I need you to go to LA," Richard repeated. He took off his glasses and placed them on top of the papers. This was going to take a while. "Your patient, Lisa Richardson, needs a surgery that neither you nor the OB/GYN attending can do. I'm sending you to accompany Mrs. Richardson down to LA and to assist Dr. Montgomery while she performs the procedure."

Alex leaned forward on the back of the chair, engaged in an intense staring contest with the Chief. "Why?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why doesn't Dr. Montgomery fly up here to do the surgery?" Alex clarified. "She's done it in the past."

"Dr. Montgomery has been more than generous with how often she's come up here to operate," the older man explained patiently. "It's only fair that we return the favor that she continues to extend to us, especially now that she's running the practice." Richard picked up his glasses and replaced them on the bridge of his nose. "You're leaving for the airport in an hour, so I'd suggest you go home and pack."

8D

As the ambulance pulled into the emergency room entrance of St. Ambrose's Hospital in Santa Monica, California, Alex expected the doors to open to reveal an Addison Montgomery in a dress and lab coat, her short red hair—it used to be longer, but she had cut it the last time he saw her—bobbing as she made her way to the gurney in impossibly high heels. But when the doors actually did open, nothing was there except for eager surgical residents and paramedics yelling patient stats at the on-call resident, who pulled him aside and demanded to know who he was and what he was doing with the patient.

"I'm Dr. Karev, Mrs. Richardson's doctor. I'll be assisting Dr. Montgomery in her surgery tomorrow morning," he declared distractedly as he strained to see any flash of red (you know, that wasn't blood) in the ER.

"Why would you assist Dr. Montgomery?" the resident asked resentfully. He'd obviously been hoping to get in on the surgery himself.

"Because I assisted Dr. Montgomery for almost a year before she moved down here, and I have followed Mrs. Richardson's case from the very beginning," Alex shot back. All his attention now focused on the greasy resident before him. "Oh, and because she requested me." Okay, so he didn't really know whether or not she'd actually requested him, but if it got this moron out of his face, he'd tell him the earth was square.

Alex didn't hear what the weasel had to say to that, because at that very moment, he finally got to see that flash of red—the good kind of red.

Apparently, LA was too hot for lab coats, but that only served to make that form-fitting black dress even sexier (yet somehow stay completely professional) on Addison Forbes Montgomery, as she strutted through the doors confidently in her three-inch heels and stopped in the middle of the room to scope out the ER while countless doctors and patients commenced their salivating.

At last, the pale blue eyes alighted on the pair of doctors standing next to a gurney bearing a pregnant woman, and a small smile graced her features. Even above all the chaos that came with being in the ER, Alex's ears still picked up the tiny click-clack noises her stilettos made against the tile floor as she approached them.

"Dr. Karev," she greeted, her smile still in place. It reached her eyes, now, which crinkled with delight at seeing an old friend.

"Dr. Montgomery," he replied, his face a mirror of hers. His eyes, however, also carried a certain degree of shock and wonderment. He wondered at how on earth this woman had managed to become even more breathtaking in the year since he'd seen her, and he was shocked to find that he didn't stutter when he spoke. He was shaking all over.

8D

"So how is everything?" Alex prompted as he and his former boss left Mrs. Richardson's new hospital room. They were letting her get some rest, and in the mean time, Addison was going to show him the practice.

"Everything's…calm," Addison responded thoughtfully. They now stood in front of the elevator that would take them down to the ground floor so they could leave the hospital.

"Is that a good thing?"

A small chuckle slipped past her thin, shapely lips as she shook her head in confusion. "I honestly don't know," she admitted, stepping into elevator. "It's different than anything I've had in years. I don't remember the last time I haven't had any drama in my life." The elevator doors slid closed, and Addison turned her head to take in her companion's silhouette. "What about you? Have you talked to Izzie since the divorce?"

Now it was Alex's turn to suppress a chuckle, though his was more incredulous than amused. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you know about that," he remarked.

"Not when Callie Torres is keeping me up to speed on everything," Addison added, trying to lighten the mood. Her smile faded, and she placed a sympathetic hand on his arm. "Talk to her. Try to be friends again. It helps, trust me."

Every fiber of Alex's being was focused on that small gesture, that slender hand resting on the crook of his elbow. "It's kind of hard to do that, seeing as she transferred to work at the Mayo Clinic," he confessed.

"She moved to Arizona? Seriously?" The elevator shuddered to a halt, which signaled Addison to retract her hand. "I'm sorry, Alex," she said quietly as they exited the cabin.

He waved it off, keeping his eyes trained on the front door. "Don't be. I think I really only married her because she was dying, and I wanted to give her what she wanted the most before she couldn't have it anymore. I married someone I loved," he confided, "but I didn't marry someone I was in love with. And I know I deserve better than to be treated like a lapdog who can be left and still want his owner back."

Addison took one last look at Alex's face before ripping her eyes from him and pushing open the hospital door. "Well, then I'm glad you've been able to find some sort of closure. God knows, it took me a whole lot longer to get that kind of acceptance."

8D

"So, that's the practice," Addison summed up after she'd given him a tour of the office. She pushed open the door to the kitchen and ushered him in. She was starving.

"Not so fast." Alex grabbed her wrist instead of following her. Pulling her body toward him, he lowered his voice just the tiniest bit and said, "I have seen Violet's office, Charlotte's office, Sam's office and Dell's office, but I haven't seen yours yet."

Addison's dark red eyebrows rose as she realized he was right. "I can't believe I forgot to show you my own office," she mused aloud. "That's a little embarrassing." A bashful chortle sounded when she started to turn around. She walked about four feet to her own office, and she saw a man sitting behind her desk. "Hey, what are you doing here?" she greeted fondly, leaving the door open for Alex to go hug the stranger and—to Alex's shock and great dismay—kiss him sweetly on the lips.

"I got off work an hour ago, so I thought I'd come surprise you and maybe treat you to lunch?" the man said. He turned his head to see Alex standing at the door and trying very hard not to glare at him for holding Addison like that.

"Oh, Kevin, this is Dr. Alex Karev," Addison introduced, breaking free of the hug when she realized how awkward this must have been for Alex. "He and I worked together back in Seattle." Alex suppressed a guffaw. That wasn't all they did. "Alex, this is my boyfriend, Officer Kevin Nelson."

Kevin extended a hand to shake Alex's, but he kept one hand securely wrapped around Addison's waist. Reluctantly, Alex took the hand. "I didn't know you had a boyfriend," was all he could think of to say.

There was that laugh again. "Karev, since when do I tell you when I've got a boyfriend?"

"You never had to," he said wryly, "I always already knew." Addison nodded slightly to concede the fight. "So how long have you guys been together?"

"Well, we were together for around six months last year, but we broke up," Kevin supplied, tightening his grip on her waist. "We just got back together last month." He placed a kiss on Addison's temple, causing her to blush. Kevin pulled away puffed up with pride, but Addison would never tell him how embarrassed that made her, especially in front of her ex…well, she didn't really have a name for what Alex was to her.

Alex left the "couple" (he hated using that word, especially when it pertained to people other than him being with other people that he wanted) alone for a few minutes and walked out to the lobby. Dell smiled and shook his head in commiseration. He knew of his plight, and he'd been there. That's what that headshake had been, and Alex took comfort in the fact that he could tell Dell hadn't been there with Addison.

Turning his head, Alex saw Addison and Kevin talking through the glass windows in her office. She didn't look completely happy, and he looked—jealous was the word that came to mind. Good, he thought to himself.

8D

Back at the hospital, Addison and Alex began running the battery of pre-operative tests on Mrs. Richardson that had to be done by the time she went into surgery the next morning. Small shadows of exhaustion now settled underneath Addison's eyes, as if the ten minutes alone in a heated discussion with the cop were enough to wear her out.

Addison was next to Mrs. Richardson, holding a sonogram wand up to her stomach and moving it around to get a closer look at the baby inside, while Alex stood at the foot of the bed, writing in her chart.

Replacing the chart on the end of the bed, Alex walked forward until he stood directly behind the redhead, inhaling her perfume while he pretended to reach over her and click something on the sonogram machine. Addison laughed quietly to herself at the obvious forwardness of her former intern. "You know, Kevin doesn't like you," she whispered.

"What, your boyfriend?" Alex replied just as quietly. His breath tickled her ear and sent shivers down her back, which she refused to acknowledge.

"He's got beef with you being so…comfortable with me, so I'd back off," Addison warned, silently thanking the fact that her patient was half deaf.

Alex snorted, making the short red hair shift against her neck under the sudden wind. "Well, you can tell Kevvy that I'm a vegetarian," he hissed.

"You are not," Addison denied. She zoomed in on the fetus to look at the heartbeat. Steady and strong. Good.

"Either way, I'm not scared of him."

"Why not? He's got guns, lots of them, hidden all over his body," Addison bragged. So she exaggerated. He'll never know.

"I've got scalpels, and I don't need guns to turn women on," Alex murmured huskily. His lips were so close that Addison could have sworn that she felt them graze her ear, and she couldn't stop herself from shifting her feet. "I've got something better."

"Okay," Addison began more loudly, addressing the patient. "Everything looks good. The heartbeat is strong, and everything is going according to plan." Lisa smiled gratefully and quietly thanked her as Addison rubbed the jelly off her stomach with a towel. "Now, do you have any questions for me?" She shook her head, her eyes drooping once again. "You're tired already? Didn't you just wake up from a nap an hour ago?" she asked concernedly.

"The monitor was beeping too loudly for me to actually get any rest," Lisa explained.

Addison looked to where the heart monitor was in relation to her patient. "But it's on your left side. I thought your left ear was your bad ear," she declared worriedly. Either this was a bizarre medical complication or she'd just acted extremely unprofessionally.

Lisa shook her head, pointing to the other side of her head, where a small, scrunched up ear sat. "Nope, it's my right. I tend to lie on that side of my head so I can hear more," she clarified, smirking slightly.

"So you…" Addison prompted in horror. Slowly, but surely, her cheeks started to match her hair.

"Heard all the dirty flirting you two have been doing?" Lisa laughed, finding great amusement in this glamorous doctor's humiliation (it just made her realize that she is human and not some supermodel alien sent down to make the human race feel inferior…Demerol was never a drug administered to help the patient think clearly). "Yes, I did, and quite frankly, I'm wondering how the hell you two are still dressed."

Alex's eyebrows rose to his hairline. "Excuse me?" He buried his hands in his lab coat pockets and prayed this conversation would end in the next four seconds.

"I'm sorry for being so blunt," Lisa apologized, "but if I was either one of you, there's no way I'd still be standing here talking to…well, myself." Addison's cheeks were burning up, and Alex cleared his throat and looked down to make sure he was well concealed—he suddenly felt very naked. "You two had this problem before, didn't you?" she observed shrewdly. Especially judging by her embarrassment and his body language, she was right on the nose.

Addison and Alex shared guilty looks with each other, before quickly averting their eyes to their prying patient, who quickly shifted in her bed and propped her head on her right arm. "What happened?" she pressed.

Addison pressed her tongue into her cheek in frustration, while Alex slowly reddened as he recalled how he'd hurt her when he blew her off after one night. He should have just shoved his tongue down some other girl's throat. It would have been more humane. Coughing, Addison dropped the towel she was holding on the cart next to Lisa's bed and made to leave. "Well, I have other patients, so I'll just leave Al—Dr. Karev here to finish up," she excused before making a hasty—yet graceful—exit.

Lisa smiled after the woman and turned her head back to the remaining doctor in the room. "You knew that I could hear perfectly well out of my left ear, didn't you?" she inquired softly, watching him start to print out the sonogram.

"I may have," he admitted. He tore off the printout and walked over to the foot of her bed to place it in her chart, after which he returned to the side to start turning off the machine. All while religiously avoiding eye contact.

"Was she the woman in the picture?" That stopped Alex in his tracks. He didn't turn to face her or anything; he just stood there, frozen with one hand on the sonogram machine and one on the handle of the cart holding it. "The picture you kept staring at on the flight over."

Slowly, Alex reached into his pocket and withdrew a photograph that had aged maybe three years, offering it to the patient so she could examine it. She would have gotten it out of him sometime. She was a lot like the woman in the picture that way.

Lisa held the photograph delicately by the edges and peered into the familiar pale blue eyes of the woman who'd just left. "Wow," she breathed. In the picture was a tall, slender woman, whose red hair fell to the middle of her back and whose face glowed in adoration for the little baby in the crib before her. "When was this taken?"

"About three years ago in Seattle," he answered quietly, continuing to put the machine away. "I had a patient who was a photographer, and after she'd had her baby, Dr. Montgomery let her sit with her in the NICU while she checked up on the other babies. She got it when Dr. Montgomery wasn't paying attention, and she gave it to me just before she checked out."

"Why?" Lisa urged. In a few short sentences, her doctor had managed to get her hooked on his unrequited love story. Damn hormones.

"She said it was because of how she'd seen me look at her during the c-section," he mused, walking over to the bed and gently retrieving the photo. He looked at it tenderly before replacing it back in his pocket. "I'd completely forgotten about it until I was packing to come here." He lifted his head to see that Lisa had fallen asleep with a smile on her face and a hand on her heart. "You better not dream about us getting together," he murmured.

I'd rather that be reality, he finished once he'd left the room in search of a certain redhead.

8D

He found Addison pacing back and forth in front of the elevators, arms crossed and eyebrows furrowed in consternation.

"Hey," he called out to announce his presence. Red hair flew as Addison jerked her head up at the sound of his voice. "You okay?"

"Was she like this in Seattle?" she asked as soon as he'd reached her side and pressed the button for the elevator.

"What, blunt?" Addison nodded as they walked into the small cabin. "No, but I wasn't blatantly invading my boss's personal space in front of her in Seattle, either." Addison wasn't paying attention to what was going on—obviously too distressed from her encounter with the patient to see the obvious—but Alex was doing just that at that very moment, and his voice had dropped to a whisper.

"What, you didn't flirt in Seattle?"

"I didn't really want to flirt in Seattle," he exhaled. His breath stirring the hairs on her neck was the only thing that alerted Addison to Alex's…proximity to her body. She twisted her neck to the side so she could look him in the eye—and found she had to crane her neck, he was so close. She couldn't even step away, since she'd been leaning against the wall of the cabin. A sort of intensity burned in those chocolate brown eyes that had Addison's body literally aching to touch him, longing to stroke his skin and run her fingers all over him. The fact that she had a boyfriend suddenly became completely irrelevant.

Ding!

Both physicians internally groaned at the sound of the elevator reaching the desired floor. They had been so close! Even the time they almost kissed in the NICU was more contact than this was—at least that time Alex had managed to brush her lips before they were interrupted.

Alex walked out of the elevator behind the redhead, scowling beyond belief.

He seriously needed to punch something.

8D

How Alex ended up sleeping in the insanely luxurious guest bedroom of Addison Forbes Montgomery's beachside house still escapes him to this day. He'd been perfectly prepared to bunk at a hotel for the night, or at least he had been until he realized that Addison had had his bags rerouted to her house when she found out he was coming.

"What?" she excused as she grabbed another piece of her shrimp roll—which she had delivered from Sushi Roku for the both of them—and dipped it in aioli sauce. Her feet, which were free from their three-inch towers, were folded up underneath her, and she leaned to the side, resting her shoulder on the back of the couch in her living room. "When Bailey came down here for a case, she stayed here, too. You're not making enough money quite yet to comfortably afford a night in an LA hotel."

"Whatever, as long as the cop isn't going to bust in here any second and have his way with you while I'm staying here, I'm fine with it," Alex shrugged, struggling with the chopsticks. He hated the damn things.

Addison rolled her eyes. "I suppose you're not going to listen when I say he's a SWAT?" Alex smirked and shoved a piece of sushi in his mouth. "Kevin's on duty tonight, so unless some major drug heist goes on here, I think you're safe."

"Does he know I'm staying here?" Addison froze with a piece of sushi halfway to her mouth. "I'll take that as a no."

Placing the uneaten sushi back on her plate, Addison set to explaining herself, "It's just that…Kevin is a little bit of the jealous type of guy." He quirked an eyebrow at her, mocking her for thinking—albeit correctly, but he didn't want her to know that—that her boyfriend had anything to be jealous of. "Shut up. He has his reasons."

"Like…?" Alex prompted.

She hesitated momentarily before finally folding. "Like the last time some cute doctor guy with nice eyes insisted on calling my boyfriend a cop, I kissed him," she confessed shamefacedly.

Alex's other eyebrow joined the first halfway up his forehead, so surprised that he failed to realize that she'd inadvertently called him cute and said he had nice eyes. "What'd he say to that?"

"I told him about it a week later, and we broke up," she declared softly. She wasn't proud of what she did. She wasn't proud of a lot of what she did in her personal life. A warm hand gently falling on her shoulder brought her attention back to the man sitting across from her.

"I understand why he'd be more prone to jealousy now," he said, "but don't you think it'll be worse if he finds out I'm staying here and that you didn't tell him?" He could see it in Addison's eyes. She knew he was right. "He doesn't know that you and I…years ago, does he?" She shook her head and stamped down those repressed memories and feelings. "So then he's got no valid reason to be jealous. Call him up and tell him," he urged. "But if he gives you a hard time about it, I'll leave you two to sort it out and go stay in a hotel or something."

"We've already established that you can't afford a hotel room in this city," the redhead diverted. Alex simply fixed her with a knowing stare until she ceded and picked up the phone. He kept staring at her while she started dialing, but now he just used the stare as an excuse to keep looking at her. He could do that all day and never get bored. "Hey, Kevin, it's me," she greeted. After a short pause to hear him speak, she continued. "I just wanted to let you know that Alex will be staying with me until he goes back to Seattle." Another few seconds for his response, and shock painted itself across Addison's face. "Because I invited him." Pause. "Because he's a friend who shouldn't be spending that much on a hotel room when he could crash at my place for free." Pause. "Because that's a weak argument, and you know it." Pause. Pause. A much longer pause, and this time Alex could tell Kevin had stopped talking. "Well, I'm sorry you feel that way." Shorter pause. "Bye." Addison lowered the phone from her ear and murmured, "Asshole," under her breath.

"What happened?" Alex inquired cautiously. He had a pretty good idea of what just went down, but he still needed the confirmation, even if she might bite his head off for it.

"He dumped me," Addison answered succinctly. She put the phone back in its cradle on the table beside the couch and placed her plate of sushi next to it, half full.

"What? Why?" Okay, so he knew why, but there was no way around these stupid social un-pleasantries, especially when you wanted to jump the dumpee like Alex wanted to jump Addison.

Addison leaned forward and poured herself a glass of wine. "He accused me of sleeping with you and said he couldn't forgive me a second time around." She took a long swig of the red wine, relishing the slight burning it sent cascading down her throat. "I didn't bother to correct him."

Well, that could have been the perfect time for Alex to finally make a move on his former boss, but the guy's stupid pride got in the way, once again. Whoever coined the term "rebound guy" should have been shot a very, very long time ago. Instead, he, too, leaned forward and grabbed a glass. He stopped halfway through pouring his glass and looked over at his companion. "I was going to suggest we drink ourselves into oblivion, but we have surgery tomorrow morning," he stated lamely, earning a small half-smile on the woman's face. "Any other ideas that would make you feel better?"

Swirling the contents of her wine glass, Addison realized she'd consumed almost all the liquid in it. She sighed and placed it next to the phone and the half-eaten sushi. "Well, there is one…" she trailed off, meeting Alex's eyes shyly.

For what felt like the tenth time that night, Alex's eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. "You mean…" He couldn't believe what she was asking of him. "…Us?"

Slowly, she nodded. "At least that way, Kevin doesn't have to seem like such a paranoid asshole, and I can start working out the knot that's been in my stomach for a month." Inch by inch, she was getting closer his face, and he could smell the scent of her shampoo.

"You've only been back together for a month…"

"Mhmm," she moaned, her eyes fluttering closed. She'd gone the ninety percent. He had to go that last ten. He had to make the first move. She just got dumped because of him.

He made the first move, all right. And the second. And the third. And many, many more.

8D

Alex jerked awake and found himself tangled in the sheets of the guest bed and completely soaked through his nightclothes in sweat. He looked to his left, hoping to see the back of a certain redheaded boss lying there, but instead, he just saw the smooth mattress. No indent. Alex flopped back down onto his back and glared up at the ceiling in frustration.

It had all been a dream. Well, not all of it had been a dream. Just the part after she and Kevin broke up.

8D

The surgery went off without a hitch, medically speaking. Socially speaking, it was the longest six hours of Addison's and Alex's lives, with her unhappy about having just been dumped the night before and him unhappy about being to chicken to make a move on the woman standing across the operating table from him. She had to have felt something, too. He couldn't have just imagined the shocks of electricity that coursed through him every time their hands touched in surgery. He couldn't have fabricated those looks she kept shooting him; it felt all too much like three years ago to have made it all up in his head. She had to have felt something, too.

They stood next to each other in the scrub room after the surgery, but Alex was oddly silent while they washed their hands. Addison tried to examine him from the corner of her eye and tried to pinpoint the problem to no avail. She hesitated to even think about it, but he acted like this quite a bit when she still practiced in Seattle, especially in the last few months of her contract.

There's only one way to be sure if this is the same thing, Addison mentally urged herself. There was a stack of paper towels next to the sink faucet she was using, but there was also one on the other side of Alex. Addison took a deep breath and stepped in closer to Alex, leaning across his scrub sink and grazing his chest with her back as she retrieved a few sheets of paper towel. When she straightened and turned around so that her back was against the sink, she was mere inches from his body, calmly drying her hands and looking him in the eye.

"Why'd you do that?" he grunted, desperately fighting the swell of butterflies in his stomach, that rush of adrenaline pulsing through his veins. She was so close, and he could see from her eyes that she was only wringing the paper towels now to keep from touching him.

Addison shrugged and continued to pointlessly dry her hands. "I needed some paper towels," she stated. She saw his eyes flicker toward the untouched stack of paper towels by her sink and then return to her eyes with a hint of skepticism in them. "Why does it matter?"

Alex couldn't take it anymore. This was exactly like three years ago, except more intense, more desperate. They both invaded the others' space, daring them to move. They both really wanted to take that dare, and Alex was fed up with their little game. If he didn't do anything now, and he got back on that plane with the patient, he'd never do anything. He'd spend his life wondering, "What if?"

He hated "What if" moments. They sucked, and they made him feel like a girl.

He almost hated the woman standing inches from him for making him feel ever-so-slightly emasculated, but then he remembered their one time, three years ago, when she made him feel anything but.

That memory did it. Alex sneaked a glance at the OR—empty. Nobody would see.

"Alex?" Addison asked softly. She cocked her head to the side and eyed him warily. He'd been silent since he asked her why she leaned over him, and that had been almost five minutes ago.

"Shut up," he whispered, closing the distance between them and crashing his lips down on hers. He finally did it. He took the dare. He moved. He kissed her first.

Addison was in shock for almost ten seconds, before her mind turned back on and she was kissing him back for all she was worth. Her eyes slid shut, and her hands found their way up to his neck, pulling him closer and never wanting to let go.

A/N: The end! I hope that wasn't too cheesy an ending, but I think this is the first time I've written a fic almost completely from Alex's point of view. It was quite interesting being on the other side, don't you think? I hope you enjoyed the 11-page, 5,578 word story, but I really won't know if you did or not unless you do…what was that word again? REVIEW!

The author would like to thank you for your continued support. Your review has been posted.